


The Wealth of Nations

by realsorceror



Series: From the Resistance [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Concussions, Double Agents, Dubious Ethics, Friendship, Gallows Humor, Heist, Implied Relationships, Jokes, Minor Spoilers, Monsters, Pirates, Sarcasm, Spies, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, Women in the Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-11-15 08:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18069896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realsorceror/pseuds/realsorceror
Summary: (or: “how I, in the company of one Vernon Roche and Others, found the Temerian Treasure,” by Ves, Lieut. Temerian Special Forces, etc.)





	1. What Occurred after Mulbrydale:

**Author's Note:**

> a lengthy (and complete) thing that rose out of confusion re: Vernon Roche in the second vs. the third games. It seemed a little odd to me that a character who casually chats about how he accidentally tortured someone to death in his first scene suddenly has an ethical problem with killing an unarmed enemy soldier. and then it took off from there.
> 
> may spoil some minor parts of the second and third games, but not any major plot points (I think.)

  1. What Occurred after Mulbrydale:



_(note: for what happened at Mulbrydale, see other works having more to do with the adventures of Geralt of Rivia.)_

Someone told me once that, if you do the wrong thing too many times, you eventually end up doing something so bad that they all pile up and you can’t stand yourself no more. That kind of made me think, and it was why I ignored my orders and went after those Black Ones at that village. Whereupon Roche and the Witcher took it upon themselves to rescue me and the two lads who I’d brought with me. You know that part.

The tale I have to relate comes after those events. Two things to note happened during: I asked why Roche doesn’t want to kill a Nilfgaardian and he looked me in the eye and said “I’ll explain later.” He also gives the two I brought along (men by name of Idler Greene and Cozent Everart) a glance and they both stroll casually off. I’m wondering what the hell is going on.

But the Commander has his ‘ _don’t fucking ask’_ look on his face, and I’m in deep shit, so I don’t. Once the Witcher’s ridden off, he hands me my sword back and then strides away without a word. I follow. We don’t go far; the boys have that Nilf collared and are waiting for us nearby. He’s still alive, but he ain’t looking good. I can hear the blood gurgling and rattling in his lungs from five feet away.

“Well done,” says Roche, kind of sarcastically. “Let’s see what he knows, before he dies.”

Which wouldn’t be long, I figured. The Nilf seemed to want to cling to life, though. Or enjoy what he had left of it. He had panic in his eyes, and who can blame him? Vernon Roche doesn’t have a bad reputation for no good reason.

“Hold him up,” says Roche. “And bring me a stick out of that fire.”

I’m the one who goes to get a brand out of the burning house nearby, as my cohorts are both busy with the now-struggling Black One, and when I hand it to the Commander the prisoner starts talking Common so fast you’d think Roche had actually touched him yet.

He says the usual shit like “Please no” and “Why are you doing this?” also “I’ll tell you anything you want.” Roche takes no mind, takes the branch, and holds it a few inches or so out from putting the hot end into his right eyeball. I can’t see the Commander’s face, but I know what it looks like – empty and waiting patiently. The prisoner launches into some tirade about troop movements which ends, eventually, in a fit of wet coughing.

“What else?” Roche says, after this is over. His tone is as casual as if he’s having a nice chat in the tavern.

“I don’t know anything else,” the Nilf stammers.

“Not good enough,” comes the Commander’s voice, and he sticks the glowing stick against the Nilf’s cheek, just under the left eye. Guy screams as much as he can given that he’s slowly drowning in his own blood and subsides after a second or two. Roche takes the branch away, stands there, and then says again, “What else?”

“I heard the army’s going to move on the Isles next.”

The prisoner’s desperate. Everyone already knows about that. Roche sighs irritably and makes a move toward the Nilf’s other cheek, at which point his prisoner collapses and starts shouting in earnest.

“No, please!” (Which is what they all say.) “I know about something else! It’s treasure, Temerian gold, stolen by the Redanians!”

I’m thinking to myself _yeah right_ , but I can tell from something that changes in the way the Commander is standing that he’s interested. He stops the end of the torch and says, “Go on.”

“I saw it, I was there,” the Nilf gasps. “All the Temerian gold in Foltest’s vaults; my old unit took it. We were bringing it to the capitol when Redanian forces ambushed us. They took it, killed everyone but me _oh gods please believe me.._ ”

The rest of his rant was ignored by all present. I had many comments, chief among of which was “You don’t actually expect us to believe this, do you?” but I thought under the circumstances I should shut the fuck up so I did that instead.

“How did you get away from this ambush?” Roche asked. He _did_ sound skeptical. The prisoner stopped begging for his life for a moment.

“Played dead, ran away,” he rasped. On his left, Cozent Everart looked vaguely disgusted.

It was becoming apparent that whatever time the Nilf had left was growing limited. Roche moved along quickly, seeing this.

“Where’s this gold now?”

“I heard them say they would take it to Novigrad. Please, you have to believe me, it is the truth..”

The Nilf devolved into another rant. Roche stood there for a moment and then said, “I do believe you,” which shut him up.

“You do?”

The Commander nodded once to Idler Greene, who pulled his dagger and put the dog out of his misery without further ado. Him and Cozent dropped the body on the ground and stood around awkwardly looking anywhere but toward me. Roche tossed his stick into the nearest burning building, fixed his eyes on me, and said in that same blank voice, “Ves. Come on.”

 

We walked a little bit away from the dead Nilf, out of earshot of Idler and Cozent (who pretended there was something interesting going on in the opposite field), before he stopped and turned around.

“The Witcher is a valuable ally and a friend, but he doesn’t care for my methods,” he began. A note of brutal sarcasm got into his voice. “As you know.”

I decided it was safest to keep my responses minimal, so I just sort of nodded. He wasn’t interested in my excuses, anyway.

“So, I don’t think I need to explain to you why it was that I didn’t want that soldier dead.”

No, that much was evident, now, even to someone as stupid as I was feeling like I might be. I said nothing in response to this statement, neither. He continued talking, voice getting quieter, which was a typical sign that someone was about to get murdered. I realized I was the nearest available person and tried not to shift around nervously.

“Your sudden decision to air out your conscience is, frankly, nothing new. However, in future, if you question my orders _in front of an enemy_ again, you’ll find yourself demoted and in irons within the hour. Clear?”

I nodded and ventured a joke:

“Figured that was what’s waiting for me, anyway, like as not.”

No,” he said, in a more normal tone of voice. “No, _you’re_ going to be finding out where that Temerian treasure is.”

“You don’t think that story was real?!” I stared at him, but he still had his interrogation face on and I couldn’t tell for sure _what_ he was thinking, if anything at all. Safe to say he was serious about my looking into the matter, and safe to say I wasn’t near on safe footing enough to argue. He just looked at me instead of answering the question.

In fact, I’ll wager he didn’t believe the gold was real in any way. He probably figured on the task as a good way to keep me busy on a pointless, tiresome task as a reward for my not following orders. I couldn’t argue, and, as it was, I deserved much worse punishment than a wild goose chase.

How wrong we both were.


	2. “How I found out the Truth and What I had to Pay for It:”

  1. “How I found out the Truth and What I had to Pay for It:”



 

That speech about bad things and what a good man does if he find that he did too many of ‘em didn’t come from who you might expect. No, not Witcher Geralt, who I was to next see while battling otherworldly forces. It came from Vernon Roche. If anyone knows prices to pay, it’s him, but he ain’t the only one.

At the time, he was working with an old comrade so-called Thaler. I couldn’t think of anyone else who was likely to have any theory on the location of Temerian gold. I went to see the old spy soon after arriving safely at the hideout.

He looked surprised at the idea of a pile of treasure being out lying around somewhere.

“How did you find out about this?” He asked, raising on eyebrow over his monocle. I looked him in the eye and told the truth, even though I knew it was an unlikely story.

“And Roche believed this Nilfgaardian soldier?” says Thaler in response to my story, even more amazed.

“Yeah,” I respond, feeling my face getting a little warm. Did I say it sounded unlikely? I meant dumb. The whole thing sounded made up.

“Well,” Thaler replied, thoughtful-like, “Temeria _did_ have a reserve of gold, and it had to have ended up _somewhere_ after the Black Ones took Vizima from us.”

He sat back and considered. I waited a few minutes, getting suspicious. Was he seriously considering the idea? Was he in on Roche’s game? I couldn’t tell; his face was typically unreadable.

“You fucking with me?” I asked, after a lengthy and uncomfortable silence. Thaler looked surprised again.

“Of course not. Roche put you on this, didn’t he? So he must think there’s something to it.”

I scowled.

“I think,” Thaler continued, “That if anyone would know about a trove of Temerian gold in Novigrad, it would be Sigismund Djikstra.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” he went on, ignoring me, “He’d be the one to talk to.”

“Right,” says I to this. I wasn’t so excited to talk to the Redanian, if I was honest. Why?

For one, he reminded me unpleasantly of one Henselt, which was someone I didn’t care to consider if I could ever avoid it. Obviously, now, we know how me and Roche’s involvement with him turned out, but even then I didn’t like him. Luckily, I didn’t have many dealings with Djikstra; the Commander seemed to figure I was best off working behind the scenes. Which was fine with me.

“Be careful if you go asking him,” Thaler added. “He _might_ tell you want you want to know, but it won’t be easy.”

I didn’t really think he would actually meet with me at all, and I said as much to Thaler. The old spy didn’t take more’n a few seconds to think of a scheme that would get me in the door.

“I have a message for him, anyway,” he says, “So you’ll deliver it tonight, ten o’clock, Seven Cats Inn. Good luck.”

That was all the help I was gonna get, clearly. I went off to find my least conspicuous outfit.

 

Afterward, who did I run into but Idler Greene? He was lurking near the cave entrance, staring gloomily out at the rain that was falling. He flinched slightly when I spotted him, which I ignored. I’d gotten a bright idea.

“There you are,” I said, as if I’d been looking for him. “You got watch tonight?”

“No,” says he. “Look, Ves, I dunno what you want, but I ain’t interested. Commander Roche didn’t used to know who I was, and now he does, and it ain’t for good reasons, so..”

“This is a real mission,” I interrupted.

“You always say that.”

“Listen, it’s just to deliver a message. You ain’t gonna make me go by myself, are you?”

Idler sighed wearily.

“We’d be going to a tavern,” I added. He shook his head, but looked a little less depressed.

“Fuck. Fine. When are you leaving?”

“At dusk,” I said. “Try and look inconspicuous.”

He stared at me.

“Blend in,” I told him. Dawn broke across his face.

“Right.”

 

Idler Greene wasn’t the fastest thinker, but couldn’t nobody say he wasn’t a man of his word. He appeared at the appointed hour, dripping in the steady downpour. I looked into his hound-dog expression and tried not to laugh.

“It ain’t so bad,” I said. “Let’s go.”

 

By the time we got to the meeting place, the rain had done its work. We both looked like any other soggy, depressed traveler stopping in to drown his sorrows. And if neither of us took our hoods down when we got inside, well, we weren’t the only ones. The inn was packed with farmers and ruffians, off-duty soldiers, hunters, and their pack of dogs. The wet stench of especially these last patrons hung in the air with the cloud of smoke. I positioned my associate at a table near the door, where he stared gloomily into a mug of beer.

Following which, I pretended I had to go to the outhouse, spotted a familiar oversize shape in a dark corner, and casually slid into the opposite chair from it on my way back inside from the necessary. Djikstra’s eyes glanced from me to the background and back. He scowled.

“Aren’t you Roche’s attack dog? Where is he?”

“Ain’t here,” I said. “Got a message from Thaler for you.”

I recited it in full, from memory, which is how he’d given it to me. It was in code and not one I understood, so don’t ask what it was, as I can’t say and don’t know what it was about anyway. It meant something to Djikstra, apparently, though. At least his scowl got less confrontational and more thoughtful.

After a minute, he switched back to glaring at me.

“You still here?”

“Sure am,” says I. “Got a question from Roche, too. It’s about gold.”

“What? What gold?”

I told him the details. Not all of them, of course – that would have been stupid – just the relevant ones like how it could be found in Novigrad probably. The spy looked skeptical, but not for the reasons I assumed.

“That’s it? Why didn’t Roche come himself?”

“He’s, um, occupied with other business tonight,” I said, which was technically true.

“Is he.”

Wasn’t a question. I shrugged in response to it anyway. A fistfight had broken out in the bar, behind me; the Redanian glanced at it over my shoulder. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking about by his expression.

“You aren’t freelancing, are you?” he asked finally.

I tried to keep my face blank and so forth, but he must’ve seen something in it somehow, because he rolled his eyes impatiently at me.

“No! Or, not technically,” I amended. “The Commander ordered me to look into this matter.”

“So, he just doesn’t know you’re here, then.”

He had me there, so I decided just then was a good time to shut my dumb mouth. The spy had this nasty thoughtful sneer on his face that I didn’t care for the looks of. I was giving thought to an escape route while he left me dangling there like a fish on a hook, Roche’s mission be damned, when I guess he got to some kind of conclusion.

“How about we make a deal,” he says slowly. “I happen to know about this gold.”

(Of course.)

“I’ll tell you about how you can get at it – _if_ it’s still where it used to be – in exchange for a little job of the type you and your handler excel at.”

Whatever that meant. I waited silently for him to get around to whatever he wanted. Not patiently. Silently.

“I have an agent held in an underground prison in Oxenfurt. See to his escape and the details are yours.”

“That’s it?” It was my turn to be suspicious. Djikstra finished his drink immediately.

“Take it or leave it, girl. I don’t care which.”

Damn, I thought, but I couldn’t see another option.

“Fine,” I mumbled gracelessly. “Deal.”

“I’ll see you again,” the spy said to this, taking no notice of my tone, and added, “Better go rescue your man. He needs it.”

 

I turned to look for Idler. He was sitting right where I left him, surrounded by a growing collection of empty beer mugs. I frowned, turned back around to Djikstra, and found that he had somehow vanished in the handful of seconds that I wasn’t looking at him.

“Fuck,” I said, to nobody.

At that point, the fistfight spilled over into Idler’s depressing sphere of influence and engulfed it.

“ _Fuck._ ”

I scrambled up and waded into the fray to rescue him.

 

Which me doing got us both kicked out of the inn.

“This shit always happens,” Idler complained, nursing a bloody nose.

“How was I supposed to know?” I said to him. “Ain’t my fault. And you ain’t hurt that bad. Also, the guy who did that to you; I think I busted his testicles on a lifetime basis, so who’s really worst off? As well as breaking that lamp. Almost burned the place down.”

Idler was cheering up under the blood smeared across his face. I had expected him to; nothing made that man happier than some property damage and the possibility of permanently maiming another person. I guess it was a reason why the two of us got along so good, all occasional differences of opinion aside.

“Think I broke that whoreson bandit’s collarbone,” he announced thickly. “Shoulda seen his face, all pale and green.”

“Good times,” I said. “Anyway, I done what the Commander said to take care of here. Let’s head home.”

“Took the words right out my mouth.”

 

Of course, I still had to explain my unsanctioned deal with the devil to Roche. He was wide awake when we strolled into town round about dawn. Idler prudently disappeared himself, leaving me alone to be summoned to The Office to take the heat. Which were as much as I deserved, yet again.

“Where the hell have you been?” Roche demanded.

“Working,” I fire off immediately. “Sir.”

Added that last as per his obvious black temper. It did nothing to lighten the mood.

“How’s that?”

“Gone to meet with Djikstra. He told me he knows where we can find that treasure. Which Thaler suggested it,” I said quickly, to forestall a lecture on how I shouldn’t be coming up with schemes off the top of my head. “And it worked out.”

“Just like that?”

At this point I explained about the prison break, which, as can be figured, Roche liked about as much as I did. Less, probably.

“You went off, alone, and hatched a deal in exchange for some information that might not even be _current?_ ”

Roche sat down at the table which he usually used to stack papers on until the piles fell over and rubbed at his forehead wearily. Some of these piles drifted softly to the floor at the movement.

“I – yes, mostly,” I said, thinking suddenly about how old he was starting to look even though he weren’t, really. “And I didn’t go alone. I took – Idler Greene.”

I recalled too late that Idler didn’t want me to bring his name up.

“Idler,” Roche repeated. He found it in him to look up and glare at me. “Of course. Ves, you _have_ to stop stringing that man along.”

I just stared at him, rather than grace that comment with a response.

“I guess this went about as well as it possibly could have,” he said to nobody in particular, and stood up again. “At least nobody got hurt.”

Yet again, I felt that remaining silent seemed like the ideal course of action.

“Did that fucking – did _Djikstra_ give any details about this secret prison?”

I shook my head.

“Can’t be that hard to find, I guess. Anything else I should know about?”

I unclenched my jaw.

“No. Sir.”

“Great. That’s something. Get packing; we’re off to Kaer Morhen to kill some well-deserving bad guys. For once.”

That’d cheer him up, at least, I thought as I made my escape. Fighting things always made me happier, anyway.


	3. Some Relevant Events that happened at Kaer Morhen and After

“Some Relevant Events that happened at Kaer Morhen and After:”

 

Everyone and their maiden aunt knows what took place at Kaer Morhen, so there is no reason to cover it again. The only thing I will bore the reader with about it is a pertinent conversation that I overheard. It took place between Roche, Geralt the Witcher, Triss Merigold, and one of the other Witchers whose name I don’t know and went thus:

 

      G: “These bombs will close the portals. Just light them with Igni. Roche, you and Ves will have to make do without them, I guess.”

      R: “Better give us some, anyway. We’ll find a way to work them if we need to.”

      T: “Where _is_ Ves?”

      R: “Making fire arrows.”

(Which I had been doing, but I had snuck off to eavesdrop on their discussion from behind a convenient wall as it looked interesting.)

      O.W: “We don’t have a lot of bombs to go around. Shouldn’t waste them on people who might not be able to use them.”

      R: “Just give us a couple. You never know.”

      T: “They can have mine. I don’t think I’ll have a free hand to throw them with.”

      G: “You sure?”

      T: “Yes, it’s fine.”

      O.W: (inaudible sarcasm)

      R: (irritably) “That’s settled, then. What else do we need to cover?”

 

The rest of the conversation doesn’t matter, and, also, I seen that black and white sorceress coming, so I snuck off back to my task and didn’t hear any more of it.

      The reason I bring this up is because of what happened as Roche and I were headed home after the battle. Both of us, I might add, were looking a little worse for wear. Roche had been pretending he didn’t have any broken ribs and I myself was feeling pretty stiff and scratched up. We were both in a fair mood, though, on account of our general surprise to actually have survived, and Roche was even smiling as he judged we were out of sight of prying eyes. Sort of.

      He passed me a bundle of something wrapped in filthy rags, wincing as he did.

      Inside was one of the bombs I’d heard him talking about. He’d never given me any during the battle, but I couldn’t very well ask him about them without anybody knowing I had been eavesdropping. “What’s this?” I asked, even though I of course already knew.

      “It’s a Witcher bomb,” he said. “I _think_ it’ll come in handy in the near future.”

      I stashed it carefully away and turned an inquiring eye on him. Normally this tactic does not work, but he was clearly in a charitable mood.

      “Remember back in the old days? That affair where our convoys kept getting blown to pieces crossing those stretches of forest off east of Mahakam?”

      “Sure,” I said. “Turned out the Squirrels were planting bombs in tree trunks and then lighting ‘em off with a long string whenever Temerian troops happened to come by –“

      Simpler times. The Blue Stripes had wiped out every last elf in the woods after we got called out and discovered the scheme. It was almost a nostalgic thought. Roche appeared to think so too, by his expression. Only it changed for the worse as his thoughts doubtless, like mine, then turned to the final fates of all those men who had hunted the terrorists down at our sides.

      He cleared his throat.

      “Yes, well. Given that we need to break into a prison, and I’d rather the evidence _not_ point toward Temerian guerillas as the culprits, I figured this would be a nice way to cover our tracks.”      

      “Blow our way in, make it look like it were Scoia’tel terrorists that’s responsible?”

      “Something like that; you get the idea,” he said, which I figured meant Yes, Exactly.

      “Just gotta figure out where it is,” I commented, upon which he said, “You’ll figure it out, Ves. If there’s anything you’re good at, it’s sticking your nose in other people’s secrets.”

      I frowned suspiciously, but he gave no sign whether he meant any specific, recent event by that.

      “Please try not to get killed doing it,” he added.

 

      It was a week’s journey back to the camp, for those of us who can’t use magic and have to stop and rest, which meant we had plenty of time to come up with a solution to the matter.


	4. How Idler Greene found the Prison:

4: “How Idler Greene found the Prison:”

 

            All plans of mice and men, however, fall apart as soon as the enemy turns up. In this case the plan was for Roche to wheedle the details out of Djikstra, who doubtless knew the location of the prison but hadn’t divulged the information to me in order to fuck with me. This idea was out almost the moment we set foot in the shadow of the caves.

            “Djikstra’s off in Skellige or some shit,” said Thaler when asked. “I think.”

            So much for that.

            As all know, there’s a prison in Oxenfurt out in the open. Everyone’s heard of it, and nobody wants to go there. A secret one’s another matter entirely; hard to find, and a place that only those people go who are meant to disappear forever. Roche figured that it was probably run by Witch Hunters, same as the other. Trouble was, the only way we could figure a body could get in was to be a guard or a prisoner, and none of us wanted to get arrested. Only other possibility was to come across it by accident. Fat chance.

            We were talking it over with Thaler of an evening, when he allowed cagily that “everyone knew” the best way to get a man in or out of any building in secret was through the city sewer system, if it had one. Which Oxenfurt does, and Roche, sounding exasperated, says:

            “Not sure why I didn’t think of that already. Been too long since I did honest work, I guess. That’s how we got Geralt _out_ of that prison back when this whole shitshow started, for fuck’s sake. Ves, you know what to do. Take anyone you need, report back when you find what we’re after.”

 

            That’s how I ended up spending the next three days underground. With me was a tracker who everyone called Sad Mike, Cozent Everart who’d let Idler talk him into it, and Idler who hadn’t even bothered arguing with me when I approached him after getting his help with the scheme.

            Day one, we mostly just slogged around in the dark. It had been raining again, and half the tunnels were impassable. Cozent and Mike struck gold – literally; there was a chest in a black corner of a room and one of the two banged his armored shins into it and sprawled out on the floor. After laughing at him, we set about getting it open.

            “Sure we can’t just pass _this_ off as the Temerian horde?” Mike asked. He struggled to pick the rusting lock for a while, and gave up. I took Cozent’s axe and started hammering at it with the haft, instead.

            “Fuck off,” Cozent says to him. “This is a patriotic fucking mission, dumbass.”

            (Mike was useful, but he was just a common poacher. Cozent’s actually Temerian Infantry, with the missing ear and unit tattoo to prove his war record.)

            “Just joking,” Mike says back to Cozent, who has a faint snarl on his face. The lock finally sort of disintegrated under my efforts, distracting them, but this wasn’t to be their last fight. Anyway, the chest only had about enough coin in it to pay for a decent bottle of wine among us, and none of us care about that sort of thing. Only other stuff within were moldy, unreadable papers and a fancy carved rock. Cozent threw this on the ground and watched it shatter with only mild satisfaction.         

            “Damn fancy nobles around here and their damn book learnin’,” said Idler. None of us argued with him.

 

            Anyway, the chest got us – me, mostly – thinking. Next day, after a tense night made worse by the arrival and slaughter of a couple drowners, I delivered a new idea.

            “Look, I don’t think this entryway to a secret prison’s gonna be out in the open anyway. We need to look for a secret switch or, I dunno, a hidden passage of some kind.”         

            “Like an illusion?” Cozent asks.        

            “Witch Hunters ain’t using no illusions, idiot,” Mike returns.

            “Them Redanians’ll use any tactic they can think of,” Cozent tells him. “I seen it.”

            “Shut up,” I say, to redirect their brewing fight. Mike is already becoming a problem, and Cozent was the one on watch when the drowners attacked. Neither is in a great mood. None of us are.

            Who would be?

            I decided it was best to separate them for the day.    

            “We’ll split into groups,” I continued. “Me and Mike one, Cozent and Idler the other. Just – look for shit that’s out of the ordinary, meet back here at nightfall, don’t get lost.”

            “Or eaten,” Cozent adds snidely, eyeing Mike. Idler shoots me his most weary and martyred look.

 

            Mike was the first person to see ary sign of Witch Hunters. We had spent most of the day slogging around the tunnels in the dark, when we spotted light at the end of one and found an exit that opened out onto the riverbank, outside the city wall.

            “This must be where the shit gets out,” I said, blinking in the sudden bright sunlight. Mike crouched down and pointed down the ground, just inside the tunnel.

            “Fresh tracks, here,” he said, “Drowners, ducks, couple deer. Rats. Look there, though.”

            He pointed out a spot just where the round walls started to slope upward. I looked and saw a footprint and a half in the mud.

            “That’s a man’s armored boot, no mistake. Washed out a little. Day or two old, I think?” Mike said.

            “I’ll be damned,” I replied. “Time to rally the troops, I guess.”

 

            Which we did, in order to move camp to a convenient location in a tunnel near the spot. It was after dark by the time we got all sorted out. Cozent and Idler did not seem interested to learn about Mike’s contribution.   

            “No fire tonight, gentlemen,” I said, earning further dismay. “Watch to be stood in the same pairs we had earlier to keep an eye on the tunnel entrance. Four hours on and four off till daybreak.”         

            “At least we’ll be able to see outside,” said Idler unexpectedly. Maybe he was trying out optimism as a personality trait, I decided.

            “Still be drowners, like as not,” Mike mumbled.

            Blessed silence reigned after that.

 

            No drowners came that night, but no Witch Hunters, either. I sat through last watch until I saw the light of dawn outside.

            “Day three in this hole,” muttered Mike. “Be out of clean water soon, I’ll wager.”

            “Shut the fuck up,” I growled. I’d heard a noise at the tunnel entrance. Mike did, for once, shut the fuck up, and slipped back toward the camp to get the other two at my nod. They all three came up the tunnel to where I was waiting for them in total silence.

            A dark, cloaked figure had meanwhile appeared and was splashing down toward where we waited in the shadows. It passed us without spotting us, where at a gesture Cozent and Idler jumped out, grabbed its arms, and yanked its hood down over its head. I stepped out and unceremoniously decked the top of its skull with the hilt of my dagger. Our captive immediately slumped down with a quiet sigh, unconscious.

            Cozent dragged it off into the dark, toward our camp. The rest of us waited a few minutes but nobody else turned up so we went after him.

            “Bad news, boss,” Cozent said as we came up on him. “This one ain’t no bleedin’ Witch Hunter. Looks to me like some battlefield crow what had a stash hidden up in these sewers somewhere.”

            He had lit a lantern, and the still bundle of dark clothing on the ground did indeed look too small and ragged to be a Redanian soldier.

            “Also he’s dead,” Cozent added. “You hit ‘im too hard, likely. Oh well.”

            Mike, looking like he dreaded the answer, kicked one of the corpse’s feet into the lantern’s light.

            “Armored boots,” he groaned.

“Stole ‘em off a dead soldier, I bet,” Idler said wisely. I looked at the scene and sighed.   

“Much as I hate to admit it, weren’t your fault. Mike. Guess it’s back to searching the tunnels. We go together this time, and keep your eyes peeled as I’m about sick of this damn place.”

“What about this?” Cozent poked the body with his toe.

“Just leave it. Maybe it’ll distract the drowners.”

 

What can I say? You see enough bodies, you stop worrying so much about what happens to them. Or, mostly. It’s different when it’s someone you know and like. Don’t ask me why.

 

Hours passed. Cozent got water in his boots. We passed a tunnel with the entrance thick with massive spiderwebs, figuring no way was there a thing in there that we needed to get involved in. ‘Bout the time that even Idler’s inexplicable cheer was starting to get holes, we suddenly heard voices in the dark. Mike doused the light and we stood on the edges of the passage, near holding our breaths. The conversation was the usual type of shit:

 “Why the _fuck_ were so many drowners back there? I thought the fucking army came down and dealt with them.”

“Who knows? Guess we’ll just get the Captain to get ‘em back down here. You know how worthless they are.”        

“Can’t even kill some damn monsters; no wonder the Black Ones are kicking the shit out of ‘em.”

“Ah, well. Least they only killed Vargen. Prisoner’s still alive is all that matters.”

“Fuck Vargen anyway.”

“Fuck ‘im.”

Three of them, from the voices, I thought. And a prisoner. In the dark, there was no way for me to communicate my desire for us to move down the tunnel, so I grabbed the nearest arm and hoped for the best. It worked for a uniquely terrifying minute or two; we all shifted slowly along, out of sight of the Witch Hunters approaching on one side, and ran into nothing dangerous in the dark behind us.

“We almost there?” said one of the voices.

“Check the damn map. Fuck, I hate coming down here.”

At this point, one of us tripped and fell into the shit water with a loud splash and muffled swear. The sound echoed away.

“What the hell was that?”

“Drowners again.”

“The fuck it was,” said the one who didn’t like Vargen. “I heard a voice.”

The sound of swords being drawn echoed down to us. I pulled mine out and said, just loud enough for the others to hear, “Screw it. Get ready.”

“Stay with the prisoner,” said one of the Redanians, and then footsteps ran toward us. Their torchlight fell on us; we were blinded by the unaccustomed light long enough for them to have a slight advantage. I yelled at Idler to get on down the tunnel toward the one that stayed behind and went after the nearest one.

The fight was a dizzying mess of flashing metal, sudden unexpected darkness as both enemies dropped their torches in the water, and the sound of Cozent’s self-congratulatory shout as he presumably battered his way through his own opponent. Mine made a wild, off-balance swing at me which I ducked under and stuck the point of my sword in his throat in short order. Once you’ve been fighting immortal frozen elves from a mythical land, what’s the challenge in one mostly-terrified Witch Hunter? After which I booked it in the direction that Idler had gone, to find him standing over a couple corpses with an awkward expression on his face. Cozent followed soon after, panting slightly.

I breathed a sigh of relief at our narrow escape. Too soon.

“Wait,” I said. “Where’s Sad Mike?”

“Runned off,” Cozent declared in dark satisfaction. “Got scared.”

“Worthless shit,” added Idler. I decided to worry about _that_ problem later.

“More to the ill,” he continued, “Yonder Witch Hunter that I got killed their prisoner afore I could get ‘em away. Hard luck.”

“Or not,” said Cozent, squinting down at the corpse. “Just some elf, it looks like. Probably Scoia’tel. I remember those traps they used to set for us in the woods back in the army..”

“ _Whatever,_ ” I interrupted, feeling somehow that I wasn’t in the mood for one of his reminiscences. Or much else. All things considered, I was starting to feel grimy, and not just because I’d been wading in shit for three days. “Just shut up and search the body for anything we can use to find this fucking prison so we can go the fuck home.”

“Aye, Lieutenant,” replies Cozent, with an eye toward Idler. They both stood about with inoffensive expressions on their faces.

“Idler, come on. We’ll check the other two,” I said.

Which we did. Mine had a ring, a few coins, and a key, which I took all of. Cozent splashed up empty-handed. Idler emerged from the shadows with a soggy paper held delicately in both hands.

“Here we are; it’s that map the one was bitching about. Bit wet, but I reckon if this is right, we just gotta keep going. Starts at the runoff opening, see, and then the route keeps on from there.”

“That coward Mike were right after all,” observed Cozent.

 

We went on in silence after that, following the runny, delicate map. Cozent and me went with swords in hand. The end of the road came up to a dead end and a blank wall. The three of us tapped on stones for a while until Idler hit a hollow one. He tapped it a few more times, to be sure, and nodded.

None of us felt much like talking, but we all nodded back to him in satisfaction. We headed back, making secret marks on the tunnel walls in the manner of the Squirrels. I contemplated the pure mountain of shit that had been the last few days as we went.

Wish I could say that getting back in the daylight and fresh air helped matters, but it didn’t. First off, a half dozen drowners were waiting for us. Idler got a nasty bite off one and immediately lost his good mood from finding the prison at long last. After we dealt with those, we found the half-eaten remains of a fourth Witch Hunter and, also, Sad Mike’s. So we then had to make sure his body didn’t have any way to identify that he was one of ours. That gory business done, I stood and frowned unhappily at the result. Not that I was particularly feeling bad about his fate; I was just feeling sort of sick and tired in general.

“Getting ate’s all that yellow bastard deserved,” Idler said viciously, holding a rag to his bitten arm. He must have seen my expression, I guessed. I smiled at him for the effort, despite the fact that it hadn’t made me feel any better, which seemed to instantly make him happier. Which somehow just made me feel even worse.

“And on top of all this, it’s fucking raining again,” said Cozent angrily.


	5. Regarding the Prison and Events Therin:

  1. “Regarding the Prison and Events Therin:”



            The camp spun into action as soon as our filth-caked carcasses finally turned up. Roche seemed to have expected _some_ kind of complication. The fact that we had left a trail of carnage to mark our passage through the tunnels didn’t turn a hair for him. Cozent and Idler stood by, watching the chaos. We all had hoped for a moment’s peace before returning to the tunnels, but it was evidently not to be.

            “Commander wants to get back and take care of business afore any Redanians start thinking there’s something fishy going on,” I said wearily, joining them.

            “It never ends,” groaned Cozent.

            Couldn’t help but sympathize with the sentiment, as my patience for the week had long been used up, but what can you do?

            “Get something to eat, at least,” I told them. “We move out in a couple hours.”

 

            When it was time to go, it took a solid kick to wake me up from the deep sleep I’d fallen into. That and the following rapid march through wood and fen didn’t improve my bad mood about having to return to the stinking tunnels. Roche had picked ten of us, including me and what were becoming my usual associates. Cozent led most of the way to the entry to the sewers.

            It looked like a black pit in the moonlight.

            “Figures,” the Commander mumbled. “It _would_ finally quit raining the one time we need it to be dark out.”

            He then gave orders for two to stay behind and guard the tunnel entrance, and the rest of us passed on into the stinking blackness. The sewers hadn’t changed much, except that a constant noise of snarling and padding feet followed and preceded us the entire journey. How had so many more monsters showed up? I had no idea. We followed the marks I’d made on the walls to the dead-end, where Idler pried the loose rock out of the wall.

            “A keyhole’s behind here,” he reported. I froze for a panicked second, then recalled I’d taken a key off one of the dead Redanians and handed it over.

            My vast relief on it opening the lock was probably mostly because I was so tired, I figure. The wall swung open and revealed a stone staircase, leading up to a little landing and a doorway. Roche peered up at this thoughtfully.

            “Some good luck finally,” Cozent said to me under his breath. “Long may it last.”

            “Here’s the plan,” the Commander said. Cozent shut up instantly. “We don’t know what exactly we’ll find up there, but there’s damn sure gonna be guards. It goes without saying that none of them get out alive.”

            He named half a dozen who’d be responsible for making sure that didn’t happen, including Cozent, added, “And me,” and kept going.

            “Everyone else and Ves, you’ll find whatever prisoners are up there and get them back down the tunnel to safety. Soon as the guards are dead and prisoners out of there, I light off the bomb and we all meet back up and get gone. Don’t kill any civilians. No heroics. Move fast. Any questions?”

            Nobody had any. He led the way up into the unknown, with me and Idler and our third person – a guy called Arwin – trailing at the back. The door at the top of the stairs was locked. I passed the key up to Roche, who turned it in the lock. It clicked open.

            Someone doused the lights and he pulled the door open with a gentle creak. Red light shone through it into the pitch darkness of the stairs. I could see Roche standing to one side of the doorway, weapon in right hand and left held up for us to keep still. Wasn’t long until we heard voices from the building above:

            “Heard the door open, Wallis. Must be those late bastards, like I told you they’d be, with the new prisoner.”

            “Fine, I’m on my way. Gotta piss first.”

            “Roust out the others, too, if you can,” said Not Wallis. I could hear his footsteps thumping closer to the doorway. Then, I saw a Witch Hunter step into the opening and peer down into the dark.

            Roche grabbed him by the collar and stuck his knife into his eyeball in one movement. The Redanian died without a sound. They pushed his corpse off to one side out of the way, Roche nodded once to us, and we were off.

 

            The first room I entered was just a basement with nothing in it, which I passed through and went up a ladder into a cavernous main room. The prison was in an old tavern, the details of which escape me due to the immediate and mostly silent violence that began as soon as the first guerilla stepped into it. I led my team through this rapidly, ducked around behind the collapsed bar, and looked around. No prisoners were to be seen in the main room. A locked door led somewhere behind the bar, which, after I tried the handle, Idler charged through and smashed to bits as soon as I was out of the way.

            A collection of filthy, ragged people within stared at him in shock. I ducked around him and surveyed these: a man, a woman, and a couple of elves. I crouched down in front of the woman.

            “Any more prisoners in this place?”

            She shrugged and shook her head. I signaled to Idler and Alwin to round ‘em up and get going; we bundled the weaker ones along, down the ladder, and into the sewer, where me and Idler left them and got back up the stairs into the blood-soaked main room. There was still some sounds of fighting on the second floor as we’d been shifting our prisoners down to safety. We went to look into it, but it was already over. Roche and his crew (minus one) were piling the corpses next to the bar. The two of us took a whirlwind tour of the second floor, where the only prisoner we found was a dead one, still in chains.

            “Were like that when we got to him,” a blood-spattered and grimy commando noted, seeing us standing there looking at the corpse.

            “Grab the body,” I said to Idler, “Just in case. Let’s go.”

 

            We hustled down the tunnel, Idler carrying the dead one and the other prisoners doing their level best to not cop a similar fate. This was because I had given them reason to believe that they might, and it worked as good as a magic spell. Even the elves kept up despite their evident despair, all the way through the dark and muck and despite the shadowy figures that snarled and howled along behind. We got out to the moonlit riverbank and our two guards at the entrance.

            “In and out in under an hour, by my reckoning,” one remarked with satisfaction.

            By _my_ reckoning we could’ve been in there for ten minutes or ten hours.

            “Sit and wait and don’t fucking talk,” I told the train of rescued prisoners. They obeyed, the elves especially in abject terror.

            And so we waited.

            And waited.

            “Might could go and see what’s keeping ‘em,” suggested Idler, peering into the darkness. I shook my head and we kept standing there.

            Eventually, I started hearing sounds echoing out of the sewer. I’m no Witcher, but I know what a drowner attack sounds like.

            “Fuck,” I said. “Idler, Arwin, stay here. You two, come with me.”

            So I went back into the stinking darkness for what I sincerely prayed would be the last damn time. The two guards splashed along after me. A few hundred yards in, we fell on a crowd of monsters; they were, luckily, not expecting us and we dropped a few of them. The others took off running down the passage. We charged after them, came around a corner, and found Roche and his last couple men battling a near dozen more.

            Luck again: the arrival of their shrieking comrades scared these enough to send most of them racing off into the darkness as well. Roche skewered the last one in its moment of weakness. We glanced at each other and went back to where we’d come from with no further discussion. Roche was limping heavily and he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t got away in one piece – all of us had some kind of scratch or slash, me included by then.

            Not Cozent, though; he grinned pleasantly at me as we stepped out into the moonlight and I recognized him.

            No time or words were wasted here, either. The Commander took a look at his surviving troops, glanced at the huddled prisoners, nodded, and pointed southwards.

 

            Seven of us remained, including him, and none of us in especially good shape neither. We traveled along for an apparent eternity, through the swamp and back into the woods, before Roche finally called a halt for the night. He set guard in a few short words and everyone else barely bandaged themselves up before they dropped off from exhaustion.

            I happened to be the first on watch, with no orders other than a “Wake me up next, Ves,” so I paced alone in the dim trees and tried to stay awake.

            This became easier because, after a respectable period of waiting, two of the prisoners started whispering to each other. I knew which ones because they were talking Elvish, which, of course, I speak as well as I do Common for reasons that would take too long to explain:

            “Their leader is that monster from the Blue Stripes.”

            “I know.”

            “He’ll kill us.

            “I know.”

            “We have to escape.”

            “We cannot; go to sleep.”

            This matter had not escaped my notice; I’d been considering it during the endless walk I’d just had. The conversation brought the problem to the forefront of my mind again. I sighed to myself. Thing was, they were right; most likely Roche _would_ kill them, because it were that or them see the hideout, and that couldn’t happen. And if he didn’t, it would be one of the others who did; Cozent sprang immediately to mind as a likely culprit. Not because Cozent were a bad person, but, well, he probably _did_ remember the traps the Squirrels had set for his units during Temeria’s part in the wars, and it was too much to ask for any man to expect him to let it go or forget about it. Just the way things are, I’m afraid.

            My next round of the camp therefore took me past the two of them. They stared up at me as I crouched down, untied their hands, raised both eyebrows meaningfully, and walked on.

            I was standing and looking out into the dark woods when they took their chance. I know this mostly because I figure they’re the ones who knocked me out. Not that I knew anyone had at all until I found myself lying on the ground, staring up at Shorty’s astonished face. It blurred in and out of focus.

            Shorty?

            No, that wasn’t it. It was Idler. He kept shaking me until I groaned and slapped at his hand weakly.

            “Stop.”

            “Sorry.”

            Roche’s haggard expression hove into view. I sat up, ears ringing, put a hand to the back of my aching skull, and found not unexpectedly that blood was leaking out of it.

            “Prisoners ‘r gone, Commander,” said someone’s distant voice. “Those two elves.”

            I didn’t hear his response – not that I couldn’t guess the nature of it – because Shorty was talking loudly, directly into my right ear.

            I mean Idler.

            Shorty being long dead.

            “Them elves musta hit you with a rock or something so’s they could get away,” he shouted. “I’ll bandage you up right as rain, don’t you worry.”

            “Please stop yelling,” I said wearily. Idler went away again. Roche took his place.

            “How’s life at ground level?” he asked, in a normal volume.

            “Had worse,” I mumbled. “Gonna be fine.”

            He stared me in the eye for a long moment, made a face I didn’t translate, and said “Take it easy” in the tone he always uses whenever he’s acting like things ain’t as bad as they actually are. Then Idler came back with a bunch of bandages and Roche left, and I sort of forgot about it.


	6. What Djikstra knew and some other Interesting Affairs:

  1. “What Djikstra knew and some other Interesting Affairs:”



            I _was_ fine, probably despite Idler’s medical intervention, but it was a day or two afore I was in any shape to do much. During that time I somehow got dragged back to camp at least, but it wasn’t until later that I learned how the last two prisoners had fared:

            There I was, cautiously having breakfast, when a woman plopped down across the fire from where I was sitting. I stopped eating and stared at her. Weren’t any other women in the company, as far as I knew. She took no notice of my confusion.

            “Ves, right?”

            “Yes,” I said blankly.

            “Glad you’re back on your feet,” she says. “Wanted to thank you for pulling me out o’ that prison.”

            I recognized her, finally, as the woman from the back room of the tavern. She looked different in daytime and without all the blood and grime.

            “Don’t mention it?”

            She stood up again.

            “I’ll be around,” she said, “Your Commander’s let me join your cause.”

            “Huh,” I responded to this, thoughtfully.

            “I’m called Noose,” she continued, and then, squinting at me, “I’ll leave you alone.”

            I had no preference either way, but I was still feeling pretty dazed, and the effort of having even that brief conversation was more work than it should have been. She walked off after this. Well, first, she passed me a crumpled bit of paper, then walked off. I balanced my bowl precariously on my knees and unballed it.

            Words were written within, which I squinted at:

            _“I saw how those elves escaped.”_ they read. _“Just thought you should know.”_

            I stared at it and all I could think was about whether or not I was fucked, and if so, how bad.

            “Ves!” said Cozent’s cheery voice, interrupting these gloomy contemplations. “How we feeling? What’s that you got there?”

            I crumpled the note up quick and shoved it in my pocket and said “Nothing,” looking up at him. He frowns, then apparently decides he’s caught on to something and goes back to grinning.

            “I’ll keep me mouth shut,” he says mysteriously. I decide not to get into whatever it is.

            “Whatever. Hey, what’s with that woman?”

            “What? Oh, her. She’s some type of thief, I hear. Commander likes her. Speaking of which, he’s back. Better go talk to him.”

            Back from where? I wondered. But there was no point asking Cozent about it; only way to find out was to get it from the source. I committed the uneaten remains of my food to the flames and went to do so.

            Also disposed of that note in the same way while I was at it. And made sure it burned entirely. I ain’t no amateur.

 

            “I’d ask how you’re feeling,” Roche said to me. “But it’s pretty obvious from looking at you. Can you ride a horse without falling off?”

            “Sure,” I mumbled.

            “Come on then. We have a meeting with Djikstra.”

 

            “What are you, amateurs?”

            Djikstra was in what Thaler later, sarcastically, called a “righteous rage.”

            “You were supposed to be discreet, not _blow up a fucking building_ and burn half the block it was on to the fucking ground.”

            Roche was standing, arms crossed. He rolled his eyes. Thaler, seated, did nothing. I just watched and tried to ignore my pounding headache.

            “Had to cover our tracks somehow,” Roche said. “Quit whining. You got your guy back.”

            “He’s _dead,_ ” Djikstra snapped.

            “Not our fault; he was like that when we got there.”

            “ _And,_ ” the irate spy continued, “An entire damn Redanian army platoon is down in the Oxenfurt sewers, looking for fucking Scoia’tel. We can’t use them to move anything for months now.”

            “Quit stalling,” Thaler finally broke in. “We got you what you wanted. Now pay up.”

            Djikstra looked like he were thinking twice, but he gave in.

            “Very well,” he goes, and this was what he had to say:

 

            “A couple years back, while you were still crawling around the battlefield with a bounty on your head – which still exists, by the way – the Army took a shipment of gold off a Nilgaardian convoy. Bound for their capitol, no doubt, but our boys brought it back to Novigrad where it became apparent that it was most likely Temerian reserve stock. They put it in the Vivaldi Bank’s secure vault. About that time was when I fell out of favor myself, so I can’t swear that’s where it still is, but I can’t think of anywhere else it could be stored. There’s too much of it to keep in any other vault in Novigrad, and someone – one of my agents – would have noticed if it had been transported out of the city.”

            “Know anything about that vault?” Roche’s eyes had a familiar, predatory gleam to them.

            “It isn’t part of the main bank building. The bank has a special-built tower on Temple Isle, in the walls, and it’s there that they keep all their gold reserves for security reasons. Never been inside it, myself, but I’m sure the blueprints for it would be in the Oxenfurt Academy Library. And that is, truly, all I can tell you, because I don’t know anything else.”

            Roche said nothing to this unlikely statement. Thaler sighed.

            “Burglarizing a shuttered library in a city under martial law. Roche, are you sure this money’s worth the trouble?”

            “No,” the Commander said. “Better off in our hands than it is waiting to finance our enemies, but this is looking like this is likely to become a steady waste of time and resources.”

            “Too bad we already put so much effort into it.”

            “And so many lives,” Roche added.

            “I’ll do it,” I said irritably. My skull pounded in protest of this new effort. All three men turned and stared at me, like they’d forgotten I was even around. Roche looked at me with a little shake of his head. I ignored him as Djikstra then, mockingly, butted in.

            “You? I somehow don’t think _you’re_ the best person to raid a _library_.”

            “I know how to read,” I snapped, “And it ain’t your problem anyway.”

            He raised an eyebrow at that. Roche shut his eyes wearily. Thaler shrugged a little.

            “Be that as it may,” he put in with a conciliatory tone, “You are not a world-class thief on top of everything else, Ves, and nobody can read what they can’t get to.”

            Roche’s eyes snapped open again, blankly intense. A hungry wolf’s.  

            “It is what it is,” Thaler continued. “And this isn’t the only affair we have on the table right now.”

            I know when I’m not wanted, and that was one of those times. Spent the rest of the meeting in surly silence, head aching.

           

            I still kept quiet all the way back to camp, up until we all were seated in Roche’s office with drinks in hands. Then all through him and Thaler’s shop talk, till Thaler left finally and Roche fixed his eyes on me.

            “You feeling all right? You aren’t usually _this_ quiet.”

            “Guess not,” I said. Which I wasn’t, at all; tired and sick and my head about to burst was more like it.

            “You did good work this week,” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet. I was busy dealing with those two people we rescued. The man’s been settled into a quiet new life, far away from here, and the woman –“

            “Seen her already,” I interrupted.

            “Good. She’s a burglar, and I brought her on to get us into this treasure vault.” He smiled at my look of weary confusion. “That whole thing was just to throw sand in Djikstra’s eyes. Thaler and I thought it was best he keeps his hands off this affair. Take a day or two, rest up, and then turn your attention toward getting that blueprint. If it exists.”

            “You trust her?” I frowned at him blearily. He shrugged.

            “As much as I do anyone who isn’t you. I think she’s in the clear, at least for something like this, if nothing else.”

            “Oh,” I said.

            He then added something else, which I didn’t hear, as I closed my eyes and fell dead asleep on the spot.

 

            A couple days later, I did sit down with Roche and Noose and Thaler, who I guess used to go to the university and knew its layout, and we hashed out a scheme. This was the only one so far that we’d come up with that felt pretty solid to any of us. It was simple – a boat, a few black outfits, we climb in a window and look for papers to our heart’s content.

            “Who’s gonna sail the boat?” Noose asked, last of all.

            “I know who,” I said. Roche rolled his eyes skyward. I, however, stood for none of this and shot him a daggered glare. He had no room to say a thing about Idler no more.

            I’d seen the looks him and Noose had been passing each other.


	7. My time in Academia:

 

  1. “My time in Academia:”



            Not saying Noose wasn’t damn good at her business. We rowed up to the walls of the Academy at midnight, under a cloudy sky, with the only noise being the gentle splash of the oars. Idler knew his job, which he whined about, but only to me and I knew his heart weren’t in it. He stopped the boat, Noose tossed a hook with a rope tied to it up to a window some thirty feet up a sheer wall overhead, and we all waited with held breaths to see if anyone had heard the sound of breaking glass.

            Nobody came, which we expected; Thaler had figured there would be guards in the grounds and on the gates, but none inside the empty buildings. Noose went up the rope without further ado. I stood, staring up at her dwindling shape, neck cracked at a painful angle, until I saw a flash of light from above signaling that she’d made it. Which meant it were my turn.

            I waved goodbye to Idler’s nervous frown, tied the rope around my waist, and went scrambling clumsily upward.

            Even with Noose pulling me from above, it was hard work and I was dog tired by the time I managed to claw my way through the broken window. I tried to pant as quietly as I could. She signaled down to Idler and sat waiting patiently for me to collect myself.

            Then off we went into the dark. This was of a different sort than the sewers had been; more open and obviously much dryer. Our footsteps echoed off the high ceiling. We stopped in a windowless hall to strike a light and study the map Thaler had drawn us.

            “Two buildings over and across a garden,” Noose said, pointing out the route. “Then we’re in. Can you pick a lock?”

            “No.”

            “Remind me to teach you later. We’ll have to get across that garden, but that’s a problem for later. For now, we go up.”

            “Up?”

 

            She meant to the roofs, where we slunk along like black cats and I tried not to look down. Not that I am afraid of heights; I was more worried that even in that uncommonly dark night a guard was gonna spot us and put a crossbow bolt through my still-bandaged skull.

            To make matters worse, I was still prone to little bouts of dizziness and confusion. One of these struck as I jumped a small gap from one roof to another. I crouched and waited for it to subside, blinked the stars out of my eyes, and struggled along to the spot where Noose was waiting. She didn’t say anything about my sudden pause, which I appreciated, but just pointed down off the edge.

            Which meant that this was where we were to go down, I saw, and, also that down there was a guard. He appeared to be mostly asleep, leaning on his pike. I mimed stabbing him and then, with more difficulty, hiding the body somewhere. Noose frowned and looked back down, studying the garden.

            Nowhere to hide a corpse, it looked like. She shrugged. I did, too. So much for that idea.

            We climbed down a rose trellis instead, to the top of some sort of round shed thing, and then jumped to the ground, crept through the bushes – giving the dozing soldier a wide berth – and went around to our final destination. Luck was, apparently, back on our side. Nobody noticed us, even during the few nerve-wracking moments we spent standing out in the open while Noose got us into a side door. It creaked slightly when she pushed it open, loud in the still night air. We slipped through in a rush, closed it again softly, and sat holding our breaths in the pitch blackness within.

           

            “Nobody’s coming,” whispered Noose. I was blinking little white stars out of my vision again. “We’re in,” she added.

            The plan was to find a place to rest, which I found I badly needed, and then start our search by daylight. Thaler had, rightly enough, figured on their being no guards inside. We were careful anyway, but both of us felt pretty good about how the job was going. Which was why, in the daylight of the next morning, the immensity of our miscalculation was so apparent.

            “Ves,” said Noose from outside the broom closet we’d bunked in, “I think we fucked up.”

            I strolled out, chewing, and stopped dead.

            Once upon a time, no doubt, the hundreds of tall shelves around us had been full. Now nary a book was to be seen. All was left was a few scattered pages here and there on the floor and a fine layer of dust.

            “Shit,” I said.

 

            The two of us wandered the empty aisles together in silence. After a while, Noose said in a wondering voice, “Where could all the books have got to?”

            “Oh,” I said, remembering something. “Bet those damn Redanian cultists burned ‘em. Heard a friend of mine talk about them doing something similar, up in Novigrad city.”

            Triss had been all broken up about it, too, which meant it was a good thing she didn’t know about this.

            “But why?”

            “Damned if I know. I ain’t a fucking politician.”

            “Amen to that,” Noose said. “Don’t suppose that they would burn building plans on top of everything else, though, do you?”

            I just shrugged and shook my head in bafflement.

            We split up. I walked along, staring up at the light coming through the stain glass picture ceilings and beaming down on all them empty shelves. It was like a big church for books, I thought, or a castle. I had never seen anything like it, not even in the palace at Vizima.

            I went up the stairs, and Noose stayed on the first floor; we figured all we could do was search the place and hope for the best. There was about a half dozen stories in the building. I found after a while I’d stopped really searching and was just wandering, wide-eyed, like I was under some kind of spell. It didn’t matter. I hadn’t really expected to find a corner of the place that remained unmolested, and I didn’t.

            I’d stopped to contemplate the view of the river as seen through the red glass of a picture window in shape of a huge flower when Noose suddenly said, “I didn’t find anything.” Must have jumped near out of my skin, because she laughed once and was smirking at me when I spun around to stare at her.

            “Me either,” I stated, pretending that I, the second in command of the entire Temerian resistance force, hadn’t been caught daydreaming by a petty thief. “Been up and down these floors. They sure cleaned house.”

            “Now what?”

            “Guess we can eat lunch and hope something comes to us,” I said.

 

            We did, talking easily enough. I found I liked Noose okay; she had an easy personality to get on with. Still, I hadn’t forgotten that note she gave me, nor figured out what to make of it, so I watched my words carefully.

            “Tell me about Vernon Roche,” she said unexpectedly. I clammed up immediately and eyed her.

            “What do you mean?”

            I must’ve sounded suspicious, because she raised both hands to ward it off and smiled disarmingly.

            “Easy. I just mean, the two of you seem real close, and I wondered in what way.”

            Oh.     

            It was my turn to smirk, a little smugly. Roche wouldn’t be getting away with this one, I decided instantly.

            “I get it,” I said gloatingly. It was nice to be on the reverse side of _this_ conversation, for once.

            Noose rolled her eyes and turned it back around on me.

            “Like _you_ have a leg to stand on. It’s obvious to everyone you got something going between you and that Idler Greene.”

            “I don’t.”

            “Yeah, sure. Seriously though. You and Vernon?”

            I could tell she really _was_ serious. I decided the conversation topic, unusual as it was, were probably safe enough.

            “It’s not like that,” I said. “We just know each other because we’ve been together so long.”

            It was hard to explain, and I could tell she didn’t get it. Roche wasn’t my father or even older brother and damn sure wasn’t just a friend or boss neither. Nor were we lovers; it had never crossed my mind to even consider that possibility. I thought it over and couldn’t explain it, so I decided not to try.

            “Or, reckon we’re together ‘cause we ain’t had anyone else _but_ us for so long. But it ain’t like _that_ ,” I said, seeing her raised eyebrow. “I’m no romantic rival to be concerned about, or whatever you’re thinking.”

            It looked like she considered the answer for a few seconds and decided to accept it.

            “I guess that works. Should we get back to it?”

That seemed like the best idea.

 

            Evening was falling when, while wandering the front of the building, I spotted something I hadn’t noticed before. The light was falling in a way that made it shine off a big brass picture on a sort of podium in front of the doors. On it was writing. I stood and puzzled over the words:

            _First floor, circulation. Second, A-F. Third, fourth, fifth. Basement, maps and drawings, archives._

            “Noose!” I said. She came trotting out of the aisles. I pointed at the letters excitedly.

            “Look at this.”

            She did and then back and me with a puzzled frown.

            “There’s a basement,” I explained. “Didn’t notice before. I guess. Let’s look for that.”

 

            The door to it was locked, but Noose got into it pretty fast and down we went in the light of a dark lantern we had along. Here, in the dust and spiders underground, were stacks and shelves of rolled papers.

            I undid one of these curiously.

            “Looks like a map,” Noose said over my shoulder.

            “It’s the lower Pontar Valley.” I would have recognized the picture, even if it didn’t have a caption at the bottom saying so. “I think we’re on the right track. Also, bet there’s more n’ just blueprints down here that we might find useful.”

            “We can only carry so much,” she said. “Also, these papers rustle.”

            She was right. I looked regretfully at the wealth of rolled maps and therefore went through until I found a few shelves where they were colored blue.

            “Well,” I said. “There’s only about a thousand of these to go through. Better get started.”

 

            Turned out that the basement held the plans to every wall and tower in the entirety of both Novigrad and Oxenfurt, and some other places besides. I pored over them for hours until, at who knew what small hour of the morning, I finally got to one that said _Vivaldi Bank Tower and Vault, 1 of 7._

            “This is it!”

            Noose jumped awake at my exclamation, stared around in brief confusion, and then groaned.      

            “’Bout time, too. This is taking forever.”

            “Hey, at least it’s dry,” I said, thinking of the sewers. “Got all seven of them here.”

            “So are we good?”

            I squinted around at the shadowy shelves.

            “I guess?”

            “Great. Let’s go!”

            We had to sort of crumple the blueprints up to fit them all into our packs, but I figured it didn’t really matter so long as they survived the trip. It was raining outside. Thunder rumbled overhead as we exited the building, scanned the luckily empty grounds, and ran for it. We got up a side wall and a flight of stairs, found our way to the roof overlooking the river, and stared out across the windswept water.

            Shockingly, there was no sign of a tiny rowboat out in the storm.

            “Must have gone to shore to lay low until this is over,” I yelled into Noose’s ear. At least, I _hoped_ that was where Idler was. She nodded and led the way across the slippery roof to a little door that we found was unlocked. We went inside the building and settled down in the hall to wait.

 

            I needn’t have worried, it turned out. Noose woke me up just after dawn. I had been sleeping in a puddle and was cold, also stiff and hungry, but it was a fine summer morning and a rowboat was bobbing across the river toward us. I signaled it with some of the broken glass on the floor. The little figure in the boat immediately flashed back at us.

            But, obviously, we had to wait until after dark to get down to the boat and go home. A hungry, tiresome wait it was; we’d had to leave most of our supplies back in the library because of fitting the blueprints into our packs, and neither of us wanted to venture back across the garden to get them in broad daylight. We passed the time by Noose trying to show me how to pick one of the locks on the doors, and me failing to learn. Idler could meanwhile be seen casually fishing in the river some fifty yards away.

           

            “Two days of shitty rations and fishing,” he remarked gloomily as soon as we got down into the boat under cover of darkness. “Ain’t caught a damn thing, either. Hope it was worth it.”


	8. I explore new Career Paths:

  1. “I explore new Career Paths:”



           

            “Hey,” I said to Idler soon as we got off the boat and Noose was out of earshot, “What do you think about her?”

            He stared at me and shrugged.

            “Guess she’s a pretty good thief, after all.”

            “Yeah, I meant, more, you know.” I made a face and some gestures with my hands; the word I wanted to use had inexplicably vanished from my mind. “Do you think she’s.. _different_?”

            Idler, not being the intuitive type, took a moment to figure out what it was I was asking.

            “Oh! Uh, hmm, she ain’t done nothing suspicious, I guess, but maybe she’s a little off. Which, aren’t we all. Why?”

            “Just, well, she passed me a weird note, which I ain’t sure if it was a threat or not. Also, she’s been asking questions about the Commander.”

            “Huh,” Idler said, squinting out over the water.

            “Keep an eye on her for me, will you? You know, subtly.”

            “You got it,” he said.

           

            Thaler’s excitement on delivery of the blueprints was almost overwhelming in it’s total absence. He and Roche unballed them onto the office table, pushing stacks of correspondence out of their way, and stood brooding over them.

            “Why are they damp?” Thaler asked, finally. It knew it weren’t worth answering. Noose did not.

            “It rained,” she said. Thaler pretended not to hear this, with typical offensiveness, and studied the second and third diagrams for a moment.

            “This looks about right,” he said. Roche dismissed us with a nod.

 

            “He ain’t mad, is he?” Noose asked me. I knew which _he_ she meant and shook my head.

            “Happy as he ever gets. Now we just wait.”

 

            It were only about twelve hours later that Roche had orders for me. I was playing cards with Idler and Cozent when I got ‘em, written out on a torn-off half sheet of paper. I read the words in the firelight, then read them again, then burned the paper with a frown.

            “What’s the news from above?” asks Cozent idly.

            “The powers that be require a boat,” I say. “Which they want me to take a team and acquire. A real one, with sails and a proper hold, none of these dinghies or the like.”

            “Well,” Idler goes from behind his cards, “Never tried my hand at piracy afore, but what’s life without new experiences?”

            Cozent shrugs at this and adds, “May as well add another charge to my sheet for them to read out when they hang me. Speakin’ of which, we wouldn’t possibly be stealing said vessel out of port of Novigrad, would we?”

            “Maybe so,” I said. And, after some hesitation as to whether I really wanted to know or not, “Why?”

            “Heard there’s a new wanted poster circulating what has my face on it. I was wanting to get a copy. You know, for a souvenir, like.”

            “..one thing at a time.” I said to this, for lack of any other possible response.

 

            As it happened, we actually took a boat right out of the river and had no need to go anywhere near a port. Took a day of pretending to fish and looking for a likely candidate, but in due time our collective gaze fell on a victim. It was a limping Redanian grain transport, undermanned and poorly steered. We casually drifted along in its wake for the rest of the day, trailing fishing lines and looking for all the world like peasants out for a holiday, and then, as the moon rose, boarded her in the dark. It were three against six, but fighting Cozent is like fighting a psychotic bear armed with an axe, so we had no real trouble taking the barge for ourselves. I stood at the rail when all was over, wiping my sword and surveying our prize.

            “What a hulk,” I said to Cozent. Thirty-odd filthy, unkempt feet in a shape that resembled much more a large bathtub than the lean Temerian cutters I was used to. Cozent shrugged cheerfully, being apparently uninterested in boats in general.

            “Idler already found treasure,” he announced. I stopped what I was doing.

            “What? Really?”

            We went aft to where Idler was engaged in going through a number of disreputable crates that were hidden poorly in the cabin. He looked up at us and held an object out into the moonlight.

            “Ahoy, Captain.”

            “None of that,” I said, taking it from him. It was a glass bottle, already open; I took a whiff and gave myself another dizzy spell from the fumes.

            “Is this supposed to be vodka?” I made a disgusted face. “No wonder these rejects were so easy to kill. Must have been blind drunk.”

            “Shitty, drunk Redanian Navy moonlighting as shitty, drunk bootleggers,” Idler said. “Winning combination, there.”

            “I like piracy,” Cozent remarked cheerfully. I poured the liquor over the side and tossed the bottle in after it.

            “A job well done, gentlemen,” I said in a similar tone. “Let’s make that fishing boat fast and get underway.”

 

            Roche came to view our acquisition the next day. We’d pulled it into a convenient lagoon of sorts in the swamp and were unloading the grain and liquor on shore. He surveyed the barge and I think he actually smiled for a second. At least, until I made my report.

            “Good news and bad news, sir.”

            He sighed.

            “Fire away. Ves.”

            “Good news is the barge was loaded with food and other supplies,” I said, “Also one o’ the lads used to be a Temerian Navy petty-officer and he says he thinks it’s unlikely to sink under us. Bad news is Cozent Everart drank some o’ that vodka that was aboard and he ain’t in great shape after. Doctor thinks he’ll live, though.”

            “I guess you can only expect so much,” Roche said to that, wearily. “What’s this boat called?”

            “ _Fortunate._ ” I said.

            “Better change it.”

            “Yes, sir.”

 

            Maybe he was worried the name were too on the nose, or maybe he just wanted to be sure nobody would recognize the vessel. That afternoon, I had the name changed. _UNFORTUNETE_ , it read in mismatched letters on the stern, spelled thusly.

            “We called it that because of Cozent,” Idler said, brimming with amusement.

            I laughed.

 

            I had barely got that done, plus the hold emptied and the decks cleaned to some sort of hygienic level, when a messenger brought more tasks from the hideout.

            “Commander wants an island,” I announced to the growing crew I had picked from the ranks. “Suitable to bury treasure on. Also Cozent’s alright, I guess. Says he ain’t ever drinking again.”

            A general laugh followed this statement.

            “Anyway, whatever of you knows a thing about smuggler’s ports and the like in these waters, come see me.”

 

            I had some options marked out on one of the barge’s ill-kept charts within the hour. The Commander turned out the next day to look them over in person. Noose came with him. Idler caught me a significant glance behind their backs and I frowned warningly back at him. I don’t think Noose noticed, luckily. Roche did, of course, but he just made an annoyed face and ignored us.

            It were just me and him going out to look at the islands, that day. Noose didn’t seem too thrilled by being left behind. Idler casually wandered over to where I was loading the little sailboat we were going to take – we having amassed a flotilla of useful small watercraft over the week – and remarked, “Reckon she don’t want to let the Commander out of her sight for so long.”        

            “Maybe so,” I said. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was that and some more besides. “You’re in charge while I’m gone, Idler.”

            “Yep. You can count on me.”

            “I always do,” I said. We separated as Roche came striding toward us.

            “Ready to go?” he asked. Was there a faint note of defensive innocence in his tone? I couldn’t tell for sure and just said I was.

 

            It was a hot day, but the breeze on the river was fair and I was getting used to the boat life, anyway. Starting to like it, even. I thought of Cozent’s genial fondness for the pirate life with a smile which Roche saw but said nothing about. He was off in his own thoughts, mostly, brooding over who knew what; this was normal for him so I kept myself to myself. I figure that on top of everything else, the fact that neither of us needed to talk much to be companionable with the other was what kept us close.

            I had smuggler-style directions to each of the islands, relying mostly on landmarks to get us there. The first had a white rock on it and was in a deep creek. We walked around it in silence till I pointed out a carved mark on a forked tree.

            “Squirrels,” I stated. Roche studied it, eyes narrowed, and nodded.

            “On to the next one,” he said regretfully. Not over the island, I suspect, but over the prospect of passing up a fight.

            Next one showed fresh footprints on the muddy shore, like it was frequented by smugglers. Third we didn’t even land on, due to the fact that as we came within a few dozen yards of the shore some kind of hideous creature with bulging eyes and talons lurched out of the trees and looked at us. It rushed into the water in our direction and I tacked the boat back around and sailed quickly away.

            The fourth island was where we stopped for lunch. It was a nice sort of place, fair sized with a small creek that ran out of a pleasant spring in the center and oak trees that sheltered its banks. We sat on these and passed a bottle back and forth.

            “Would you bury treasure here?” I asked.

            “Think I might bury _myself_ here,” Roche replied. It wasn’t a great joke, but I was glad enough to hear one come out of him, so I laughed anyway. From there we mostly reminisced on old times and so forth, until Roche dozed off in the shade. I sat on the bank and stared out at the river, waiting for him to wake up.    

            At least, that’s what I _intended_ to do. What actually occurred is that I woke up suddenly out of a bad dream and found that it was dark. Night had fallen and dense fog had risen out of the water and the only sound I could hear was a soft breeze shaking the trees. It sounded like something breathing, which thought drove off any remains of sleepiness I might have and instilled a cold dread in my chest in their place. I found Roche where I had left him, still sound asleep, poked cautiously at his shoulder which normally would have been more than enough to have him wide awake and ready to fight. He didn’t stir, so I dragged him back to the boat and dumped him into it.

            Even the soaking he got from this didn’t have any affect. I knew what an enchanted sleep looked like by then. I swore and figured all I could do was sail off and hope he would get better on his own.

            Which he did. Also – I swear it’s true, even though at the time I wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of my concussion-addled brain – the night sort of started to fade as I put the boat in the current and sailed through it. At first it was just like the fog was burning off or something, but, then the whole darkness faded away and I was back in the brilliant sun of a late summer afternoon. Roche stirred groggily in the bottom of the boat and sat up.

            “What happened?” he said. “Where are we?”

            “Why am I all wet?” he added, naturally displeased.

           

            I explained I figured the island was somehow cursed and I had luckily realized in time to get us away from it. Roche squinted at it, innocently fading into the distance, and said “Huh” to this news.

            “Good thing I had you along,” he got around to saying. “That could have been a problem, otherwise. Why’d you wake up and I didn’t, I wonder?”

            “No clue,” I replied, deciding on the spot that I didn’t want to describe the nightmare I’d had to him. “Hope this last island works out, though, as if it doesn’t I’m out of ideas.”

            Roche shook his head.

            “No need for that,” he said. “The cursed one will do fine.”  

            Far be it from me to question my superior officers, but the face I made must’ve said everything I didn’t because he explained to me with an air of easy magnanimity, “Nobody’s going to come steal treasure from an island if they fall asleep on it and never leave it again. Unless they have you along, anyway.”

            That made sense, I guessed.

            “No need to go telling anyone about the curse, though,” he added. “Let’s keep that detail to ourselves. The men won’t like it.”

 

            We got back to the camp on the shore and the barge after nightfall. Noose had been waiting on us, apparently; Roche strode off in her direction with only a comment about me staying with the ship for a few more days to say _farewell_. Idler detached himself from a patch of shadow as soon as they were gone.

            “Nothing new to report,” he said. I glanced at him and back in the direction that they had departed in and said slowly, “Right,” then collected my thoughts.

            “Good. Hey, have whoever it was that marked the South Fork island report to me immediately.”

           

            Idler brung him to the cabin of _Unfortunete_ , which I was using as an office of sorts. He was a stringy, sunburnt fellow, but none of the guerillas were exactly handsome. He looked surprised to be in my presence at all. The occasional reminder to myself that I was an officer didn’t hurt, so I failed to make him feel more at ease about the interview.

            “What do you know about that island?” I asked him, pointing its location on the chart. He squinted down at my finger and returned to something like attention.

            “Well, not much, to be honest. It ain’t my usual stomping grounds, or, at least, didn’t used to be back when I had a boat of my own. Damn the Black Ones.”

            This statement elicited a sage nod from Idler.  

            “Where was I?”

            “The island,” Idler reminds him, and adds, “Hurry up, man.”

            “Right, right. I knew it existed, of course, and its location, but I never set foot there. Funny, actually, only reason I recalled it was because the other day afore I come down here to help outfit the barge someone were talking about it with me so it was fresh in my mind.”

            “And who was that?” I ask.

            “That woman, as who was here earlier,” he said. “One who’s always around the Commander these days, seems like.”

            “Yeah, I know who you mean,” I said. Idler turned the ex-smuggler out and stood looking curiously at me. I had a cold feeling in my chest again, like I’d had on the island earlier that day.

            “Don’t ask,” I said to him, seeing his stare. “I can’t tell you anyway.”        

            “I won’t, then,” he replied. “You sure are troubled by this Noose character, though, whatever it is. Want me to stage an accident for her?”

            “No,” I said. “Not now, at least.”

            “Well, you know where I’ll be,” Idler said to this, and left. I sat down and stared meditatively out at the moonlit deck alone.

 

            What Noose did or did not know about cursed islands and whether she had sent me and Roche to one on purpose I didn’t know. Nor, for the next few days, did I even have time to begin worrying about it. The barge was hive of quiet, but nervous activity; men and supplies were coming and going at a regular rate, and I were so busy all I had time to do other than work was practice my lock-picking and, when it was too dark to even do that, catch a few hours of troubled sleep.

            In a remarkably short time, though, the set day for us to make sail came down from the hideout, along with an order for me to report immediately back to its source for briefing. I set off that same hour with Idler’s voice echoing morosely in my ears.

            “Reckon it’ll rain in the next day. Of course. It always do. Mark my words.”

 

            It had been a week or two since I’d been home and yet Cozent was the only person who seemed pleased to see me. He grinned all over his face, strode over from his guardpost and announced “Ves! I ain’t dead yet, as you can see.”

            “Congratulations,” I said. “Hope it works out for you. How’s business?”

            “Oh, the gods are turning over, as they do. Get orders down from the mountain and nary a thing otherwise these last few days. Ain’t seen a hair of His Lordship’s head since I woke up out of that vodka coma I was in.”

            (He meant Thaler.)

            “Which they found a use for the stuff, did you know? Commander showed us how to make firebombs out of it. Reminds me of the old days, back when I were on campaign in Kaedwen..”

            “Look, Cozent, I gotta go,” I said to ward off an hour-long war story.

            “Right, right. Good luck up there.”

 

            He needn’t have worried. Roche’s briefs, short and delivered on the spot or long and pre-planned, invite neither argument or confusion. My appearance earned me a speculative look from Thaler, a strange sort of smile from Noose, and no comment at all from Roche. He just launched into his speech as soon as I was at the table.

            “Right. This plan has three parts, two teams. First, we take the barge under cover of darkness up to the wall of the tower in question. Rain’s expected, which’ll make going unnoticed much easier than it would otherwise be, but everything else will of course be more difficult.”

            I remembered Idler’s stupid, dire weather predictions and tried not to smile. If I failed, nobody seemed to notice.

            “From there, we split up. My team goes up the tower and into it through either a window or the roof, if we have to. We’ll rig up a quick pulley system. From there we travel down through the tower to the vault, take out any guards. Noose will be the one to open it.”

            “Other team goes down the riverbank and into the sewers. Ves, that’s you and anyone you pick. The only resistance I expect down there will be from drowners, but we cooked up those firebombs to deal with them.”

            This would have been a pun coming from another man, but not from Roche. Accordingly, nobody treated it as such.

            “Study the maps I’ll give you. The route we chose will take you quickly from the entrance to a point under the tower. You’ll have to get a sewer grate open to get in. Get through, meet us at the vault. As soon as it’s open, all we do is pack the treasure back down quick and onto the barge through the sewer tunnels, then we’re long gone by daybreak. Thaler will pilot the vessel. Any questions?”

            Nobody had any.

            Except me but I waited until the maps and so forth had been passed out and the room was as clear as it ever got before I considered asking it. I then stood by, considering how to broach the somewhat awkward subject without causing offense. Must have waited too long because Roche suddenly said “What is it, Ves? Stop lurking in the corner. Let’s hear it.”

            No need for tact here, apparently. I stopped lurking and perched on the edge of the map table instead.

            “It’s Noose, Commander.”

            Roche stopped reading the paper he had in his hand and looked levelly at me, instead.

            “What about her?”

            “It’s just – I think there’s something _off_ about her.”

            “Explain,” he just said, so I did. Starting with the weird note she had passed me the first time we spoke, ending with the thing about the cursed island. Roche heard me out, at least, before he proceeded to brush me off as I expected but had hoped he wouldn’t do.

            “The island might be a mistake,” he said. “The elves I already knew about. Who else could have let them go? They didn’t untie their own hands. You aren’t as subtle as you think,” he added, seeing my face was going red. But he said it kindly. For him.

            “As for the questions she asked you,” he continued, “I can only assume she was making sure the way was clear before she made a pass at me. Which is more than some would have done. It’s fine, Ves. Don’t worry about me.”

            But, as mostly all I’d done for years was worry about him, I didn’t even bother looking convinced by this explanation. He sighed and put his paper down on top of a leaning tower of others.

            “Or do, if you must. In any case, whatever you think, we need her to get into that vault, and there’s no way around it. You’re just nervous, Ves. Once this affair is over with, you’ll see.”

            I made a last-ditch attempt at a resolution.

            “At least I should stick on the same team you’re on,” I argued. “Cozent can lead the other one through the sewers.”

            But he just shook his head no and there was no way to convince him, so in the end I had to head back to the boat and hope he was right and I was wrong. That was usually the way it turned out, anyway.

            Didn’t make me feel any better about it.


	9. The Temerian Gold:

            9: “The Temerian Gold:”

            The evening following this, _Unfortunete_ slid out of her berth in the swamp creek and sailed out into the dim, threatening evening toward the vague redness of the sunset beyond the clouds. Her crew of commandos kept silent until we were out in the main river, where a sort of low small talk began to be audible from various corners of the deck. Me and Idler stood in the bows, a few raindrops splattering down into our faces. He looked as unhappy as I felt.

            In part, this was from nerves generally, but, also, we’d earlier had more or less the same argument that I’d had with Roche. It was over me telling him that he’d be one of the ones climbing the tower with Roche and Noose, which he had protested strongly. In the end, I’d had moral advantage, and not only because I’d finally reminded him that there was in fact a rank structure of sorts in effect and that mine was higher than his.

            “I need someone I can trust in there,” I’d said, “And it’s you.”

            That had finally shut him down.

            The talk dwindled down and the barge sailed on in silence; the guerillas were no Blue Stripes, but Cozent wasn’t the only real veteran in their ranks. They mostly were asleep, given their chance, wrapped in dark cloaks and blankets against the rain. I didn’t join ‘em any more than Roche would have, as it weren’t my place.

            “What’re you gonna do after this war?” Idler asked me suddenly. I looked out at the dark water and shrugged.

            “Hadn’t thought of it,” I said, which was more or less true. I couldn’t recall a time when I hadn’t been in a war of one kind or another, and it hadn’t really dawned on me that a time without a war might come along. But Roche would have his free Temeria or die trying, and if he was dead it stood to reason I would be too. And if the free Temeria were achieved, what then? I didn’t know. I wasn’t so sure he did, either.

            “Might get myself an education,” I considered, thinking suddenly of Oxenfurt and its church for books. “Why?”

            “Well,” Idler said quietly, like a man who was hunting within himself for the right words, “I had wondered if maybe you might want to marry me.”

            I turned my head and stared at him in shock. He blinked rain out of his eyes and stared at me, no hint of a joke anywhere on his poorly-shaven face. It was evident that he was serious, and, for some reason, the idea didn’t seem as completely impossible as it might have done.

            “If I was gonna marry anyone, it would be you, I guess,” I said to him. He smiled in his most especially depressing manner. “But I ain’t so sure I want to marry anyone at all, anyhow. So I guess I have to say no. Sorry, Idler. Really.”

            His smile turned cheerful at that. He breathed a sigh into the wet evening.

            “It’s all right, actually. I just wanted, you know, to ask. Glad you turned me down, as I ain’t sure I’m the marrying type, either. Thank you.”

            “Don’t mention it,” I said, and after that we stood together in friendly silence until the watery lights of the city were gleaming off the starboard bow and Roche sent for me to report to the quarterdeck.

            “You look strange,” he said on seeing me. “Something not right?”

            “No, Commander. Right as rain,” I ventured, which was both true and because I thought the joke might brighten him up. He just shook his head at me and then all good feeling I had vanished as Noose and then Thaler appeared out of the dark and we got to business.

 

            The boat bumped gently up to the wall of our tower in dead silence except for the slight scrape of wood against rock. I stood at the rail, dripping, and was off and headed down the riverbank as soon as it stopped, my picked team close behind. Cozent was one of them. He cut the first drowner we came across down before it could make a racket and into the sewer tunnel we went. I made sure we were well inside before we stopped and lit the lanterns. The light set off a cacophony of eerie noises from all around, beyond every bend and corner. We ignored these and I concentrated on navigating to our destination.

            No need for the map; I’d memorized our route and made sure a couple others on the team had, too, just in case I had one of my occasional memory blanknesses. “We go left,” I announced, and off we went.

            Wasn’t long before we needed to disperse the crowd of monsters. Shadowy figures had gathered, blocking the hall ahead of us. Someone passed me one of the firebombs, which were just a vodka bottle with a rag stuffed down inside it. I lit this from the lantern I carried, passed it to Cozent, who grinned and flung it at the snarling horde.

            It didn’t so much explode as it did burst, shooting broken glass and sending drops of flaming liquid scattering through the pack of drowners. At this, more n’ a few ran for it. The ones that were burning followed them, shrieking and starting more fires and setting their comrades alight as they went. The others we just killed quickly and kept going.

            It was slower work than I preferred or expected; the tunnels seemed to wind along with no rhyme or reason and nobody had apparently bothered to exterminate the residents, lately. Still, we progressed steadily, burning our way through monsters with our wet jackets wrapped around our faces against the heat and the smoke that was starting to fill the air. In time, we came to the appointed spot. I peered up at a grate in the low ceiling, decided it was wide enough for one person at a time to squeeze through it.

            “Crowbars,” I said in a low voice. “Get it open.”

            This also took a while. We kept having to light off more bombs to keep the drowners at a safe distance, which filled the tunnel with smoke that trickled through the grate. I had to switch people in and out of the job of getting it open so that nobody passed out from breathing it in. Eventually, though, the grating suddenly came loose from its stone mountings and hit the floor at our feet with a resounding iron _clang._

            We all froze, even the drowners.

            “Someone might’ve heard that,” said a quiet voice in the smoky shadows.

            “Should all be busy fighting our lads up top, by now,” Cozent suggested in response. Were they? I had no idea how long it’d taken for us to get to this point. I looked upward at the ceiling of the tower through the hole and made a decision.

            “Boost me up. I’ll scout the place out and come back.”

            “What if you don’t?” Cozent asks to this. No time for hesitation; I glare at him but say “Wait an hour, then if not go back to the boat,” and broker no disagreement so they just do as I say. I scramble up and through the grate, standing on his shoulders.

 

            I crouched in the smoky hall for a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Were no guards in sight, and so I moved in the direction of the stairs up as quietly as I had ever done.

            It was three flights to the vault, around a corner, along a landing to a central chamber where the door would be. I saw no guards and heard no signs of life the entire time I went along, neither fighting or even a mouse scurrying, which was strange. Stranger still was that I arrived at the vault, peered cautiously around the corner, and saw it were still shut tight and unattended.

            So what could I do but keep going up and up, to the place Roche and the others were supposed to have got in. Eventually I started hearing voices as I climbed the winding staircase. I slowed down, crept on hands and knees up the final flight to the very top floor, and froze as I saw the trouble.

            And was it ever.

            “How much longer is Ves going to take?” said a voice which I recognized as Noose’s.

            “I don’t know,” Roche replied irritably. “Maybe they didn’t make it.”

            “Bullshit. Ves would probably crawl up here with one arm if she had to. She ain’t dead.”

            This was possibly the nicest thing anyone had said about me in weeks, but I had no time to be flattered. I could just see the scene laid out in the room. The stairs were situated at the edge of it, and otherwise it was a big, square, open space. I had to lie flat and peer sideways over the edge of the steps to look in without being spotted. Roche and most of the team were kneeling with their hands up in the center of the room. I could also see a couple corpses lying on the ground, and, for a painfully distracting moment, I found myself hoping that Idler wasn’t one of them. Armed men with crossbows stood around in a loose ring, dressed in the armor of city guards. Also, Noose stood with them, armed with a sword and facing my kneeling associates with her back to the stairs.

            I figured I could just about guess what had happened, more or less. Trouble was whether I could sort the problem out without more casualties – at least, of my side. I had a sudden wish to be the one to shut Noose up. She was still talking about me, but saying nothing nearly as flattering as her first comment. Fill in the blanks yourself if you wish.

            Inspiration suddenly struck. I slithered cautiously back down the steps and made tracks back to where my comrades waited in the sewers.

 

            Actually, they had taken it upon themselves to secure the hallway while I was gone, which I had not expected. They forebore to shoot at me as they realized who I was due to my whispered swearing.

            “Alright, alright,” Cozent said. “No harm done. Nobody’s dead.”

            “Yeah, about that,” I go, and launch into an explanation of our dilemma.

            “Fucking knew that bitch wasn’t right,” announced a grubby, skinny figure in the dark. I recognized vaguely he was the smuggler I’d talked to aboard _Unfortunete_ before.

            “Shut up,” I said to him, not having time for this. “I got a plan. Listen up and don’t get any more creative ideas on top of it this time.”

 

            I went back up the stairs, moving quiet, but not near as quiet as I could have. Past the closed vault, up the stairs, halfway to the square room on top of the tower, where as soon as my head cleared the top stair I froze. Stopped, swore at the scene in front of me, and drew my sword. A dozen crossbows turned my way instantly.

            “There you are, Ves,” says Noose. “Drop them weapons.”

            I did.

            “Where’re the others?”

            “Fuck you,” I reply.

            “Tell me or I kill people ‘till you do,” says Noose. I act like I don’t believe her, whereupon she points at a kneeling figure and one of the guards swings his crossbow around toward that man with a purpose.

            “Wait!” I say. “I left ‘em down in the sewer, waiting for me. I’m the only one as can fit through the grate we opened.”

            “Go check,” she tells one of her filthy Redanians, “But don’t let ‘em see you.”

            He pushes past me and heads off down the stairs. I stand quietly for a minute or two, hands where all can see them, and then the guard’s voice comes calling back up the stairs.

            “It’s true!”

            At this, I softly breathe out the air I had been holding in. But I gotta keep ‘em busy, so I start talking about stupid bullshit.

            “Why are you doing this?” I ask Noose.

            Not that I give a damn; the reasons why people turn traitor or are one anyway are Roche’s department, not mine. I just kill ‘em.        

            “Why do you care?” She snaps. “Get your arse over here with the others.”

            I go, slow.

            “You with the Nilfs?” I ask.

            She stares at me like I’m a fucking idiot.

            “What? No. Shut up, dummy. You _trying_ to get killed?”

            I was not.

            “Just curious,” I said, put my hands behind my head, knelt down, and then –

            “Is that smoke?” says a guard. I just yell _get down_ and follow my own advice, flatten myself on the stone floor and shut my eyes. The sounds of shattering firebombs and associated shrieking fill the air a second later. I scramble to my feet, staring around in the smoke. I think I was looking for Vernon Roche, but I found myself face to face with Noose, instead.

            “Fuck, you’re a pain to get rid of,” she snarled, and took a swipe at me with her sword. I dodged it and also the next slash, then a black figure with an axe crashed across and _through_ her before she could get another one in. I staggered back away from the movement.

            Cozent unburied his axe from her skull, winked at me brightly, and vanished back into the craziness.

            I was busy for another few seconds, making use of her dropped weapon, but the fight was mostly done in little time and all I really got to do was skewer a guard in the arm while someone else relieved him of his head. Then I was just standing in the aftermath, head spinning from the smoke and little white stars dancing in my vision again. Idler suddenly appeared out of the confusion.

            He didn’t say nothing and neither did I; we just stared at each other and then he grabbed my shoulder and squeezed once, hard. I nodded and smiled back at him.

            I saw Roche next, looking dully at the corpses around him. He realized we were all waiting for his orders, collected himself rapidly, and waved an arm toward the stairs.

            “Nicely done. Back to business,” he said, and we clattered out of the carnage and downstairs to the vault. I caught his eye but he gave no sign. Which, for him, was enough to tell what his feelings probably were.

            “We was coming up using that pulley on the roof and Noose were supposed to be inside scouting out the vault,” someone explained to me in a low voice as we went, “but when we got down inside she were there with these damn Redanians and there were nothing we could do about it. Must have been on their side all along, I figure. Good job you turned up.”

            I had no response to this, and Idler’s shrug at me as we all gathered before the closed vault didn’t help me come to my own conclusion. Was no sense of victory knowing I had been right all along, either, just a weary hollow feeling. It’s hard knowing not to trust nobody.

            Roche considered the vault door a moment and said, “Anyone know how to open this?” Cozent here suggested using the firebombs, but as the door was iron sheeting over wood, we doubted that would work. There was only one way and I knew what it was.

            “I’ll do it,” I said, limping to the door.

 

            Spent a long time, an hour or more, at that keyhole with the tip of someone’s stiletto knife and a bit of metal, trying to get the lock open, but I could barely get into a padlock, much less the lock to a vault of that nature. So I gave up on that plan, summoned Cozent, and we took his axe to it. Then a hammer. Then the crowbars. Finally, the battered lock fell out of the splintering wood, Cozent bashed his shoulder into it until the door flew open, and the two of us stepped into the vault with lantern and swords in hand. The others crowded around behind us.

            It ain’t easy to describe what five million odd worth of gold bars looks like, but even Roche’s jaw dropped open at the sight. Each stack had to be fifty high, and each bar of gold were stamped with Temerian lilies. We got a few moments to stand there and stare at the horde in awe, and then Roche says, “Enough sightseeing. Pack it up.”

            Moving the gold from the vault to the boat took a long time and is not a very interesting tale, so it’s enough to say we did it.  In the end, me and Roche were left standing in the empty vault. He looked around at it and nodded slowly.

            “Commander,” I said, taking advantage of our solitude, and then, as he made no sign that he was listening to me, “ _Vernon._ Look, uh, I’m sorry about Noose.”          

            He looked up at me and said, “Me too.”

            “You alright?” I asked. He replied in his _things ain’t so bad_ voice.

            “As much as I ever am,” was all he replied, which were all he needed to say. I nodded and sighed a little to myself.

            Idler and Cozent rattled in together at this point, to report all ready to get underway. Roche says “Very well,” then seems to think twice about whatever order he was going to give next. He turns to me instead and say, “Leave a calling card, why don’t you, Ves, and then meet us.”

 

            So on the wall of the top floor, over the corpses of our enemies, me and Ilder and Cozent painted a message in blood:

**FREE TEMERIA.**


	10. The Cursed Island:

“The Cursed Island:”

 

            I now move on a few years, to an incident that took place not so long ago. Temeria was newly a protectorate of Nilfgaard, whatever that means, which seemed to satisfy the Commander and that was good enough for me. Roche and I (and Idler, and some others) are on a ship, but a real nice one this time that belongs to Nilfgaard, and a familiar island is getting closer off the bow. “Don’t fall asleep,” Roche has warned the crew. Their commander is some fancy-pants stuffed shirt who I am not even allowed to name here, much less address. Not that it keeps me from making fun of him to Idler later on.

            The ship lands and Roche and I (and Idler) lead a pack of Nilf soldiers along the creek, past the pleasant spring, and up to a crooked old tree on which is carved a rough letter _T._  

            “Here,” he announces. The Nilfs start digging. We stand and watch ‘em work. They start unearthing grain sacks, after a short while. The first one they open up and it’s full of gold bars, and then they stop checking the contents after that because they pull up so many. There’s eighty buried in total, as me and the Commander well know, and we wait until all eighty are piled up next to the spring.

            The head Nilf wipes his sweaty forehead and says, “This is all of it?”

            “Yep,” goes Roche.

            The Nilf then waves a hand and the Black Ones start packing it all back to their boat at double-time. Only other thing he says, looking amazed, is, “Care to explain how you came into possession of so much gold?”

            Me and Idler look at each other and he just winks at me. Then I glance at Vernon who considers the idea a moment.

            “Nope,” he says.

 

_end_


	11. POSTSCRIPT

POSTSCRIPT: “What I Learned about Noose:”

 

            Which Triss Merigold read this account you have just finished, and, among other more mundane advice about my grammar or what have you, she says, “You forgot to reveal Noose’s motivations.”

            “Because I don’t know ‘em,” I told her, but she insisted it was best I find them out for completion’s sake. Also, well, I got curious thinking about it. Also, honestly, I was a little bored. After all that time, seemed unlikely to me that I’d ever work it out, so I did the only thing I could think of to attempt it.

            Made a wild guess and followed it up.

            Which the guess had to do with Djikstra, and the man were long dead, good riddance to bad rubbish. So I had to go talk to the only other spy who’d been involved in the affair.

 

            “Want to talk to Thaler,” I told the guard outside his office. The guard just said “His Lordship is busy at the moment,” so I ended up having to wait a long time and by the time I got in I was irritated. His Lordship seemed truly surprised to see me. We exchanged whatever pleasantries seemed necessary and then I say in response to him finally asking me what I want, “You know Djikstra?”

“Well, not anymore, obviously,” he goes. He sits back at his desk and eyes me like I’m a mouse and he’s a cat that’s thinking about playing with it before he kills it.

            “ _Obviously,”_ I echo. “Can I look at his old letters and such?”

            After the incident that had resulted in the Redanian scum’s well-earned demise, we had of course laid hands on and carried away any documents we could find that seemed important, and any that didn’t as well. Thaler considered the request for a minute and apparently decided I weren’t up to anything fishy.

            “They’re in sealed archives,” he said, “But I guess I can give you access. Why?”

            “Got some matters of unfinished business to look into is all,” I said truthfully. “Nothing to worry about.”

            He didn’t quite look like he believed this last statement, but he did what he said he would nevertheless.

 

            Much of the details of what I read in those archives are still classified, so I won’t describe them, but I did find out _something_ pertaining to the matter at hand. The afternoon that I got done I was sitting with Idler, enjoying the sunshine and a bottle and telling him about it, as he was naturally curious about why I had disappeared to spend the last few days buried in old papers.

                “All that reading’s gonna go to your head,” he said. “You find anything out from it?”

            “Well,” I said, “All I know is Noose didn’t work for Djikstra. No possible way.”

            “Huh,” he goes. “So what _was_ her deal?”

            “I guess we’ll never know, more n’ likely,” I told him, which he accepted with typical unconcern. What Idler Greene don’t know don’t bother him. A respectable way to live.

 

            So, Noose could have been anything other than Djikstra’s agent. Maybe she worked for the Black Ones after all, or one of the criminal kings of Novigrad. Hell, for all I know, she were just a plain thief all along, looking for a haul and taking advantage of an opportunity when it fell in her lap. I got no leads, and, if I’m honest, I don’t care much.

            What I don’t know won’t hurt me.

 

            Regards,

                        _Ves,_

_written in Vizima in June of year 1277._


End file.
